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Ido Ferber | Episode 788
Ido Ferber was born 1989, Jerusalem, Israel. Ido pursued his education are received his BA in Industrial Design from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and graduated 2018. Ido is currently an MA student at the Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo Japan in the department of Ceramic Craft.
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I’ve never seen anything like what you do. Who went before you that you would use as inspiration?
It’s really mixed because there is a lot of stitching of wood in Japan. If you see a column that is kind of cracking open a bit they will just come with these metal staples and just bang them in there and it is done, it’s fixed, you know. And it’s very nice visual for me. I don’t know why staples or stitches…I don’t know, I find them very pleasing visually. So there’s that and then there’s the famous celadon bowl from the 14th century. It is a famous bowl that was owned by the Shogun of Japan which is the highest military position. And he had this wonderful, beautiful blue-green glazed bowl that he loved and it broke and they sent it back to China. It was made in China at the time and they sent it back to China, and the Chinese, because the master died and they couldn’t reproduce another one, they just put metal staples in it. They actually stitch it back together in a very similar way to Kintsugi. Besides that I think one of my biggest inspirations would be Christina Christianson.
The direction of your work?
It doesn’t help inform the direction of my work because I really hate mass producing things. So even if someone likes this I am not going to make fifteen of them and sell them all. My work is more directed by what I want to make. But if there is no response to it then you are in a problem because maybe you are having great fun making coffee pots but no one likes your coffee pots so maybe you should make something else. I don’t know. It’s hard to say because I really am only just beginning my professional life now and the responses have been good and I have been lucky enough to make what I want to make.
In order to do what you do I imagine you need to make a lot of room just to play. Is that accurate?
No, not at all. The first series I made in uni while I was doing my BA and all I had was a table, a standard student table and some shelves. And after I graduated, I was lucky enough to have a friend of mine who had a ceramics studio, her mom had a ceramics studio in their house. It was a tiny, tiny studio, again it was just a table and a kiln and some shelves. And I find that’s enough. I’m not a big fan of big spaces maybe. But I didn’t need much because one experiment after another, after another, after another and if you have enough shelves, you can just put stuff on there and you kind of try and try and try and toss out whatever is not necessary and whatever failed. You take a picture of it and toss it in the bin.
Do you have to chase away the fear of failure when you are doing work like this?
No, not at all. I welcome it. There’s no fear of failure. That’s how good things come out. You fail and you fail and you fail and then in the end something works. You take that in and you try again. I think that’s actually the only way to develop is to fail. Things would probably be pretty boring if everything worked out all the time. Just yesterday I opened the kiln and it was like 90 percent failure. That happens sometimes.
You said you had some professors challenge you. Is it important to have feedback that pushes you beyond just playing with clay to actually make something?
I think feedback is really important and that is actually one of the reasons I did go to study. I didn’t want to go to university at all. But I was making things all the time. You make a cup and you show it to your mom. And she’s like, Oh this is so amazing and beautiful. And you show it to your friends and they say, Oh this is amazing. The people around you will never really give you actual feedback. First because they
What’s your favorite place to hang out in Tokyo that’s not clay related?
Oh, that’s a hard question. It’s been quite hard now with Covid to actually hang out in places. I think my favorite place to hang out in Tokyo would be not in Tokyo. (laughter) I am really not a city kind of guy. I am really much more of an outdoor person. The Japanese countryside is amazing so I think my favorite place would be out of Tokyo.
Book
In Praise of Shadows by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki
The Beauty of Everyday Things by Soetsu Yanagi
Contact
Instagram: @idoferber